McCrory hopelessly confused about elections bill he signed

Governor Pat McCrory is making the rounds on local radio stations, clumsily defending the sweeping changes to election law he signed Monday afternoon. The more McCrory talks about the new law the more he seems confused about what it actually does when it comes to early voting.

The law reduces the number of early voting days from 17 to 10, but local elections boards are required to maintain the same number of early voting hours, thanks to an amendment by Senator Josh Stein.

McCrory told Frank Stasio at WUNC[1] that in the past politics played too much of a role in determining the location of early voting sites and that under the new law “every political precinct” will be open a week before the election.

Every precinct? Surely McCrory doesn’t mean that every polling place at every school, church, and firehouse will be open for the entire week before Election Day.

McCrory also talked about the early voting changes in an interview with Gregg Jensen with WWNC [2]in Asheville, saying that “every precinct will be open two weeks before a vote.” You can listen to that portion of the interview here.

[audio:http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/McCrory-on-WWNC.mp3|titles=McCrory on WWNC]

McCrory apparently believes that all of the roughly 2,700 precinct polling places in North Carolina will be open before Election Day, from one to two weeks before depending on which radio interview you go by.

It’s not very reassuring when the man signing the most sweeping voter suppression law in the state’s history is completely baffled about what the law actually does.